2017 Institutional Pricing Changes

Science family of journals 2017 institutional licensing pricing and policies

The Science family of journals is announcing exciting new institutional licensing pricing and policies for the 2017 license year.

Over the past year, Science’s Institutional Licensing department has gathered feedback on our pricing and policies from library and other institutional customers. The feedback indicated various aspects of our program fell short of our customers’ expectations and needs. We listened carefully and, as a result, we’re changing our approach and realigning our pricing and policies.

While realigning our pricing and some of our policies will take multiple years, our customers will notice an immediate and marked difference in our account management and sales approach.

Libraries are an essential part of our scientific infrastructure and, more importantly, are integral to fulfilling aspects of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s mission to disseminate scientific knowledge and to advance science education. Recognizing these points is at the heart of our multi-year realignment.

Our customers will benefit from the following pricing and policy changes in 2017:

First Release. Science articles published online ahead of print, what was our Science Express or First Release product, will now be included in every Science license.

FTE based pricing for non-profits. We’re introducing transparent full time equivalent (FTE) based pricing for non-profit customers. Also, list prices for new for-profit and non-profit customers will be posted on our Librarian Portal.

Greater discounts. We’re introducing new bundle discounts for institutions that purchase more than one Science title. We’re also increasing our consortia discounts.

No more remote site fees. We’ll no longer assess "remote site" fees for institutions with multiple locations.

Text and data mining. Text and data mining rights for non-commercial uses will also be part of our standard license.

As noted earlier, this is a multi-year realignment. Our goals are to have fair and transparent pricing for all our customers and to bring our existing customers into reasonable cost-per-FTE thresholds. For 2017 this means some of our customers will see price decreases, some will pay the same amount as they did in 2016, and some will see price increases.

For customers seeing higher than average increases, our Institutional Licensing team will work closely with them to establish transition plans, phasing in our new rates over multiple years.

We’re also pleased to share we're forming our first library advisory council. This council will help us evaluate customer feedback on our pricing and policy changes and they will make recommendations for further improvements to our program.

Our Institutional Licensing team will proactively contact any institution seeing higher than average price increases in the coming weeks. Other customers will receive their new pricing along with their renewal notice. Our new license terms will also be posted on our Librarian Portal.

We hope our library partners are as excited about these changes as we are. Please don’t hesitate to contact a member of our Institutional Licensing team should you have any questions or concerns. You can email us at scienceonline@aaas.org or call us toll free at (866) 265-4152 or for international calls +1 (202) 326-6730.